According to one of their directors, they are doing rather nicely out of them! Current sales are around 3-4 units per day, and they need to sell 12 each week to cover costs. The following is quoted from a thread on the subject over on the vegetableoildiesel forum - this is from the aforementioned director:
With the cost of the plant, its worth noting we tend to have to order components in multiples of hundreds to reduce our bill of materials but even so our material cost is around £1600. On top of this we have direct build costs, overheads, support line, warranty returns, marketing etc. The long and short of it is if we sold at less than £2500 we would make a significant loss. This is based at 12 unit sales per week, if we sell less than this we do make a loss.
There's a chap on ebay called (I think) ringolui who is operating as the UK end of a Chinese manufacturing operation. Mate of mine almost bought one of his set ups before deciding I could build him one instead. Never got to see it in the flesh, but it was all in stainless - no plastic involved - and the whole set up was £1500 - that included a meth recovery unit, processor and a pre-heating/de-watering vessel. Looked (from the photos) to be way ahead of the Fuel Pod in value for money.
I think half the trouble with many of the units being sold currently is that the sellers are basically saying you just put oil in one end and biodiesel comes out the other. Very few mentions of washing, drying, settling, glycerol disposal, meth recovery etc etc. Some are just laughable - an old oil drum, a 10 quid immersion heater, a 30 quid pump and a bit of pvc hose - "yup, that there's your processor Sir - a snip at £250" Saddest bit is that people are actually buying them - and then ending up on various forums trying to find out why it all went so wrong......
Cheers,
Andy
